Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• With the announcement of Colossal Biosciences acquiring Viagen, a leader in pet cloning, former NFL quarterback Tom Brady announced that his own puppy, Junie, was a clone of a former pet.
• While not the first time a celebrity has cloned a pet, the reveal sparked a discussion around the economics and ethics of the practice.
• While cloned dogs (in genetics only, not in disposition) can be expected to live happy, healthy lives, the canine infrastructure required to make these dogs—often for the super-wealthy—has raised ethical concerns.

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In 1996, scientists in Scotland introduced the world to the first clone mammal—a sheep named Dolly. The immensity of this scientific achievement was clear—Dolly captured the attention of the world and even earned her creator, developmental biologist Ian Wilmut, a knighthood. But the moment also ushered in a cascade of moral questions. Two decades after this historic event, a majority of Americans remained skeptical of animal cloning, according to Pew Research poll in 2017, and that sentiment still holds in 2025, according to a Gallup poll**.**

Of course, debating the ethics of cloning sheep is one thing, but what about our beloved furry family members? This question came to a head in 2005, when South Korean researchers finally succeeded in cloning a canine, an Afghan hound. Fast-forward two decades, and the pet cloning business is now in full swing—and due to the laborious cloning process, it almost exclusively caters to the super-rich. Cloning a dog costs an average of $50,000 (though, for you cat lovers out there, felines are 50 percent cheaper). When considering cloning your favorite pooch or, say, buying that much-needed family SUV, most people will opt for the latter.

Most… but not all.

Earlier this week, Colossal Biosciences—the company that claims to have brought dire wolves back from extinction (a claim that has been hotly debated by scientists)—announced their acquisition of Viagen, one of the leading pet cloning companies. Accompanying the announcement, former NFL quarterback Tom Brady stated that Colossal had cloned his dog, Lua, who died in 2023, to produce his new pooch, Junie.

“[Colossal] gave my family a second chance with a clone of our beloved dog” Brady said, according to The Guardian. “[I’m] excited how Colossal and Viagen’s tech together can help both families losing their beloved pets while helping to save endangered species.”

While Brady isn’t the first celebrity to choose the cloning route—Barbara Streisand revealed in 2018 that two of her three dogs (Miss Scarlet and Miss Violet) were cloned from a deceased pet—there are several reasons why critics question the practice of cloning.

The first is simply a numbers game. While cloning or using other forms of synthetic biology to save endangered species is in itself an intense subject of debate (as highlighted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN), dogs are famously not endangered—far from it. More than 300,000 dogs were euthanized in 2024 in the U.S. alone, with some three million dogs entering shelters.

Because Brady’s Junie is similar to Lua in genetics only, they likely won’t have identical personalities—in other words, they’ll be different dogs. Critics would likely argue that the money required to clone the pup could instead have been used to support existing dogs without homes through donations to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) or a local shelter.

Even if every existing dog in the world magically had a happy and healthy home, the process of creating these clones comes with some pretty serious implications. When those South Korean researchers created the world’s first clone dog in 2005, they required the use of 1,095 eggs and 122 adult dogs before they succeeded. According to a more recent 2022 study that analyzed 1,000 clone dogs, only two percent of cloning attempts produced a living puppy. The methodology has drawn criticism for its reliance on these surrogate animals.

Cloning itself isn’t necessarily an inherent evil. For example, scientists have worked tirelessly to clone the critically endangered black-footed ferret in an effort to increase the gene pool and ultimately bring the species back from the brink, and it’s an effort that’s been largely successful.

But as Brady himself says, Junie is “not a scientific experiment, but part of our family.” Animal advocates, on the other hand, say that the same cannot be said for the unseen animals that made Junie possible.

Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.